She travels to the Amazon seeking answers for herself (about the mysterious circumstances of Anders' death and about the meaning of her own life) and information for the Vogel Pharmaceutical Company (about Dr. Patchett's heroine leaves her comfort zone in Eden Prairie armed with little more than the talismans of Western civilization: a volume of Henry James, a back issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and a high-tech, GPS-enabled cell phone so sophisticated that it can "make a phone call from Antarctica".
In a matter of weeks, Marina is sailing on a pontoon boat "down a river into the beating heart of nowhere", a would-be Charlie Marlow voyaging into Conrad's heart of darkness. Fox, the 60-year-old suit-and-tie-wearing Vogel CEO who is also Marina's lover, to scramble for a "plan B." Dr. But Anders never returned, leaving Marina to puzzle over the announcement of his sudden death and leaving Mr. Only a few months earlier, Marina's lab partner Anders Eckman was sent to the Amazon on the same mission. Swenson's secret work with an open checkbook and virtually no questions asked. Swenson's research into the miraculous post-menopausal fertility of the women of the Lakashi tribe is so valuable to Vogel that the company funds Dr. Marina is sent to the Amazon by Vogel Pharmaceuticals in pursuit of a rogue scientist, Dr. Marina makes her way to a place deep in the bowels of the jungle, "somewhere on a tributary off the Rio Negro" in Brazil, and then must fight her way back home to the bright, frozen landscape of Eden Prairie. The novel traces the steps of 42-year-old Marina Singh, pharmacologist at the Vogel Pharmaceutical Company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. "State of Wonder," Patchett's sixth novel, is a riveting variation on that tightly plotted journey from darkness to light. Patchett explained, " was the first time I saw something that made me think, Oh, that's what plot is: you're going along, it's fine, then everything turns upside down people band together, sacrifices are made, there's passion, there's loss, there's a journey and at the end you cut a hole in the boat and you come into the light." Prize-winning author Ann Patchett ("Bel Canto," "Truth and Beauty," "The Magician's Assistant") once confessed that the single most important artistic influence on her work is "The Poseidon Adventure," the 1933 Paul Gallico potboiler that was made into a classic 1970s action-adventure-disaster movie featuring Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine fighting their way out of a luxury liner capsized by a 100-foot tidal wave.
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